Re: MA Ulm Pretender
 

I think Abysia is just as vulnerable as Ulm to an Elephant rush. But many races have no need to take an awake pretender.

They have tough castle bought troops that can hold out for the 1st year.

Re: MA Ulm Pretender
 

Funny thing, I was actually just looking at this based on this thread, and I decided to do it with a rainbow mage. Was going better a couple beers ago. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I have managed to put together some fairly nasty stuff, but I suppose it depends on what your definition of a rush as there's no way Ulm is going to be a threat on turn 6. Turn 12 though it's not difficult to have three castles pumping out arbalests and black plate flail infantry (double attacks) backed by a significant number of smiths casting destruction and earth meld for quite the double whammy of removing both protection and defense (you've got to use earth gems for destruction initially since you've got no earthpower). You also bring whatever indie slingers and archers you can scrape together. Finally, your rainbow pretender wind guides your massed arbalests and follows that up by casting wooden warriors a couple times which stacks...nicely with black plate infantry while wind guided slings/shortbows are plenty nasty enough when falling on the victims of destruction. True this has some obvious counters if you're expecting it and doesn't have the universal application of a classic rush (its just not gonna work against some nations), but there are plenty of nations that would have a lot of trouble dealing with this very unexpectedly aggressive Ulm with research they have available on turn 12.

Re: MA Ulm Pretender
 

With Black halbreds, can you not now rush a nation that is reliant on blesses.

Re: MA Ulm Pretender
 

That's an interesting question, Sir_Dr_D, it's too bad noone's replied to it yet. Also, Magma bolts are Evo 3, and Bonds of Fire is Thau 2, isn't that a little high to be relying on them, under two separate schools, for early rushes?

Re: MA Ulm Pretender
 

It is. Any suggestions for what else to do?

I'll probably post little more on this when I get back home and can try stuff out, but there's little else to do.

Re: MA Ulm Pretender
 

Yes, I just recently obliterated dual bless (W/S) Vanhiem with the black halberds in a rush. The best they could do was zapping me with a bunch of lightning bolts, but as the black halberds aren't sacred, I just overwhelmed him with numbers - mixing in flail black plate infantry from my second castle to soak up some damage. It was funny, his infantry actually did better than the vans or Valkyries, but you're not really gonna win slugging it out infantry vs infantry against Ulm....

Re: MA Ulm Pretender
 

Actually, my experience says that it depends. Black halberds are dangerous against small sacred elites, but against lower-tier massable sacreds, they can be less effective- I used Mictlan every effectively against them, and although they did more damage than the average ulmish troop, they fell quickly as well.

Re: MA Ulm Pretender
 

MA Aby has Beast Trainers, who have Animal Awe+3. I took a 12-elephant indy province in MP at the end of year 1, with just 1 Trainer and minor chaff lost, using 2 Beast Trainers, 2 indy commanders wielding Rat Tails (built by Wolf Tribe Shamans I'd been hiring to try to get a D1), my starting army, some free event militia, and a few salamanders.

There was no real loss building Beast Trainers instead of mages at the second fort (actually I had 3 forts because I got a freebie from luck-3) because I'm using drain-2 scales anyway.

Aby can also build H3's at all forts, for Smite.

Edit: Whoops, sorry to have gone all OT!

Re: MA Ulm Pretender
 

That doesn't sound right. I just tested the following couple scenarios with a F/S blessed Mictlan.

40 Black Halberds vs 30 jaguar warriors - Mictlan spent a little more gold to get a priest to bless, not counting the opportunity cost of a double bless. Result - 30 dead jags, 6 dead halberds.

40 Halberds vs 50 jags - Mictlan spent a bunch more gold and managed to outrecruit the non-sacred halberds somehow. Result - 45 dead jags, 21 dead halberds.

As this is MA, considering the more likely matchup of eagle warriors - 50 eagles vs 40 halberds. 5 dead halberds, the eagles broke after 22 deaths.

Thing is, even "cheaper" sacreds are limited by your "holy" recruit points, and given the standard Ulmish prod-3 you're not going to be able to outnumber the black halberds until you've got more than 3 castles, with temples (and labs for mages)...pretty far outside the "rush" range.

Re: MA Ulm Pretender
 

I agree, but have to nitpick about MA Mictlan. They shouldn't be putting labs in their first expansion castles, since they just need a temple to recruit the eagles and 60-gold priests. Move the priests back to the capitol to research, and indy commanders can bus the eagles about. Capitol should always only recruit jags.

Also, Sloth-3 pays a lot towards the F/S bless.

On pure random maps though, MA Mictlan doesn't stand a chance of doing this since they need 'real' mountains to build 800-gold, 3-turn forts. All other fort choices are horrible. On a non-random map with mountains, you can have a Hillfort and temple up in turn 7, and still have been recruiting 10 jaguars per month, using something like:

Oracle
Magic: Fire 9 Astral 9
Dominion 10
Scales: Order 3 Sloth 3 Heat 3 Growth 1 Misfortune 2 Magic 1
Imprisoned

Also, Mictlan's force should include a few turkeys from the lab. They are excellent at getting to the front in no time, and are great against low-MR units with their 100-precision Mesmerize ranged weapon, which is penetration+2 according to debug:

hitunit 2124 568 dmg128 spec1216499712 ba1
spec_mr pen 12 mr 10 (unr 2124 vic 568 dmg 11 eff 128)

I think turn 12 you could be looking at 80 jags, some shield chaff, and 20 eagles.

But Mictlan's going to take significant losses and be open to a 3rd party attack, so the Halberds are probably enough of a deterrent.